Melodías para confirmar, preguntar, sugerir o pedir en español

Abstract

In this paper, we describe four melodies /+interrogatives/ of Spanish which have been obtained by applying the Melodic Analysis of Speech (MAS) method to a corpus coming from the whole peninsular territory and the Canary Islands, in order to use them in language learning. We have analysed a total of 282 question settings by 197 speakers, among men and women of different age, of which the expected answer is yes or no. We will describe the melodic features of each melody type; exemplify each one and detail the more relevant pragmatic uses found in the corpus. We state that these utterances are used not only to ask for and obtain a more or less known answer but also they often involve other intentional actions such as inviting, confirming, suggesting, offering, expressing politeness o, simply, it is a rhetorical question of which we do not expect any answer.